NUFORC Sighting 25898

Occurred: 2000-12-05 16:20 Local
Reported: 2002-11-01 18:00 Pacific
Duration: 20 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Corvallis, OR, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted other objects

A bright spherical object moved across the sky in daylight, then appeared to split into multiple bright lights.

About 4:20 pm I saw what looked like a star at about 75 degrees altitude just west of north. It was still broad daylight, so I thought maybe it was an Iridium flare. But the object didn't appear to be moving in the sky, and it didn't fade out.

I got out my spotting scope. At 45X magnification it appeared larger, as though it was much closer and/or bigger than a star. It looked like a thick ring of light with a darker center, but that may have been something to do with the scope's optics. It moved out of my scope's field of vision pretty quickly, so it was moving after all.

At about 4:40 pm it was WNW at about 30 degrees altitude. I lost sight of it for a second, then I'm almost certain what I saw next was the same object: I saw about 10-15 tiny but bright sparkles, as though the object had exploded. The sparkles were just points of light. Then I lost sight of that in the scope. I couldn't see anything unusual with my naked eye any more.

Since I had not changed the focus between seeing the single object and the multiple points of light, and the multiple points appeared tiny, I assume my scope was in focus when viewing the single object.

Posted 2002-11-04